Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview • Hacker News Board

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#131

Post by zivkovicp » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #91

zivkovicp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harsh words, but true. +1 The best thing for most people to realise is that "life's not fair, deal with it".

A convenient philosophy for those who gain an advantage from the unfairness.

Perhaps, but also for those that simply want to try to improve their lives without the baggage of constantly feeling that the world is oppressing them.

Personally, whatever little I have is probably 1/3 luck, 1/3 hard work, 1/3 good decision making. I've never inherited a single $1, don't have a CEO relative to hire me, etc... but what good would it do to blame the world for any of that? Life _isn't_ always fair, whatever.

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#132

Post by HWR_14 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

kova12 wrote: post #128

HWR_14 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why it's not a reasonable career for someone leading a movement. Unless/until the movement can pay them to be full time, they have to do something to eat. I would imagine people leading a movement would prioritize a lower number of work hours to distract from that and a flexible schedule. That said, this appears to be a mod of a subreddit, not the leader of a movement.

If someone like this individual is your ideal of a leader, more power to you. And one _can_ really be a leader while doing something menial (look at Buddha for example), but there has to be something more to a person than walking dogs. And that is what reporter tried hard to uncover, but of course it was interpreted as him trolling. But he was really onto something. You might want to work something minimal, but that'…

I specifically said that this person wasn't a leader - I said that walking dogs while leading a movement was a reasonable choice. That is, this person isn't a leader, but it's unrelated to the fact that they are a dogwalker.

You seem to have watched a different interview than I did. I don't recall seeing the interviewer ask about what else they did with their time off. I saw the interviewer accuse the person of being lazy and ask if they had higher career aspirations.

> And it turned out that this individual has no answer, which likely means that the answer is "wasting"

I have no idea how hard it is to be the starting mod of a 1.4 million person subreddit, but I guess it requires some amount of work.

> you are a parasite on society,

I don't even understand what that means.

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#133

Post by ComradePhil » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

xenadu02 wrote: post #3

Never talk to the media. That goes double for right-wing media. They aren't your friends, all they care about is pushing their narrative. They will steam-roll you and ruin your life for ratings / views.

I disagree. There was nothing wrong with the interview itself. I don't think they looked bad. Fox News did their bit of trying to ridicule the person to please their core audience but the person handled it relatively well and people who were likely to support the AntiWork cause would be able to see the reporter in bad light and be interested in the subreddit. So, the attention they received was good.

If everything had gone well, they would get a swarm of new users to the sub-reddit, people who thought this was a bad idea would dominate the discussion for a few days, but when the dust settled, the subreddit would be much better off for it.

The problem here is that the person being interviewed has a shady past. They have boasted about sleeping on the job, have had multiple allegations of sexual assault and other controversies, which people brought up all the time, which is the reason they had to go private.

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#134

Post by hogrider » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

Why are reddit mods always like this? They power tripped so hard they'd rather destroy this forum than be embarrassed by it. What causes someone to get delusions of grandeur just because they are doing this unpaid job for reddit which should be limited to just delwting all the nastiness in the forum?

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#135

Post by robot_no_419 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #119

d1sxeyes wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I agree we can do better, especially in terms of the fairness of distribution of wealth, but frankly yes, to take part in a society, you either need to 'pay the entrance fee' or have it waived for you. We generally 'waive' the fee for children, the elderly, and the disabled, but ultimately, right at the very sharp end, some folks HAVE to work so the others have food. So those of us who are not growing food need…

But why should I have to pay the entrance fee and why should I have to work? Unless you believe axiomatically that everyone "should" work there is no rational reason why everyone should work. Hunter gatherers didn't work. They hunted, gathered food, took care of the children and whatnot but they decidedly did not work. But now, thousands of years later, we're devoting most of waking hours to work. That's not progress…

"But why should I have to pay the entrance fee and why should I have to work?" You don't have to, nobody is forcing you to work. If you want to dumpster dive and live on the streets you never have to work. Plenty of people live like this. You choose to work because it's the easiest way for you to support the lifestyle you want to live. What you're really asking is "why won't society give me nice things while I do nothing" and the reason is because you're not that special. If everyone thought like this then we would all end up worse off.

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#136

Post by robot_no_419 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:24 PM UTC

Datenstrom wrote: post #8

The personal attacks and especially acting like dog walking is some lowly profession is just disgusting. Anyone doing anything "ambitious" is only being held up by the support of many others making just as meaningful contributions. A dog walker provides a great service to a community that impacts many peoples lives by keeping their companions, which provide emotional support and boost their productivity, healthy and…

If everyone worked 25 hours a week, dog walking would not even exist as a job. Literally anyone can do it as long as they can walk. Let's not pretend it's a noble contribution to society here, it's objectively speaking something a 15 year old teenager can do.

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#137

Post by hogrider » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

was_a_dev wrote: post #93

The biggest issue anti-work has, is it's name. At it's core (the defensible part) anti-work is an American labour/union movement, reacting to the exploitation of workers due to flimsy labour law (think Amazon workers). But the term anti-work is so emotive against the movement, that is just becomes indefensible. So much that the subreddit itself is no longer a single issue movement.

It was by all the people that hated work at its core and reject the traditional values regarding work, the protestant / puritanical work ethic above all. I agree it changed to that later but really they should have gone with anlther name by then.

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#138

Post by hogrider » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:29 PM UTC

lloydatkinson wrote: post #68

The working theory is the mods, including this one, were paid off to be a total disaster to try prevent the movement gaining further traction. Everyone in the subreddit voted no to a media appearance. That mod decided otherwise with a second interview with another mod not yet aired.

I have no problem believing this but then again it could also totally happen organically bc reddit mods are the biggest assholes on earth, over reaching constantly, totally arbitrary.

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#139

Post by jmrm » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #126

jmrm wrote: post #87

- For those outside of the loop, a couple time-ordered points not mentioned here: Fox contacted to the mods and asked specifically to talk with this person, and the mods accepted this instead of other due to having some experience in other media. All of this without asking the users if they agree with that. The Fox interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc After the Fox interview happened, practically th…

> Mods weren't clever enough to ask the people if they wanted or not to be in Fox, who should be the spokesperson, They did ask the subreddit. It voted that no one should go on Fox.

I didn't read that. In that case, they did worse than I thought.

Re: Anti-work subreddit goes private after rough Fox News interview

#140

Post by d1sxeyes » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:47 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #119

d1sxeyes wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I agree we can do better, especially in terms of the fairness of distribution of wealth, but frankly yes, to take part in a society, you either need to 'pay the entrance fee' or have it waived for you. We generally 'waive' the fee for children, the elderly, and the disabled, but ultimately, right at the very sharp end, some folks HAVE to work so the others have food. So those of us who are not growing food need…

But why should I have to pay the entrance fee and why should I have to work? Unless you believe axiomatically that everyone "should" work there is no rational reason why everyone should work. Hunter gatherers didn't work. They hunted, gathered food, took care of the children and whatnot but they decidedly did not work. But now, thousands of years later, we're devoting most of waking hours to work. That's not progress…

I think you’re completely wrong about progress. We can travel in less than 24 hours to pretty much anywhere on the planet. We can put telescopes in space. We can speak to each other even when we’re in different cities. None of this would be possible if no-one worked.

Either we all go back to being hunter gatherers, or we exploit the poor to do our fair share of the work that needs to be done for us to live the lifestyles we want to lead. You don’t want to work? Fine. But then you are not entitled to other people’s work product either.

No computer, no electricity, no plants you don’t grow yourself, no meat you haven’t personally slaughtered.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think we could be doing better. But the problem starts with consumerism and same-day shipping and buy-now, pay-later, and LaCroix, not with work.

If we could reduce consumerism, we could for sure reduce our working hours significantly.